Month: January 2010

For over three centuries, the Chinese people have found in Feng Shui the source for of internal and external balance and harmony. We all are searching for a little harmony in our life. Today’s fast-paced life assails all our senses with demands and expectations. Stress, anxiety and tension accumulate as the ongoing demands of work and family, home and free time push us to the very brink. Pushed and pulled by the equally demanding expectations of boss and family. Driven to the end of our rope by the increasing demands of life, the bills and everyday battles we push our own hopes and dreams into the background. Everyday, another e-mail, phone call or traffic jam, pushes us to the limit. In this environment, energy is fast depleted and tension dramatically increased. How to escape this self-perpetuating treadmill? Turn your home into a peaceful sanctuary by utilizing the techniques of Feng Shui.

The concept behind Feng Shui is to harness positive energy. Using the guiding principles, you can identify the difficulties within your physical environment and remove them. While, this may appear to be another project, consider the short and long term benefits. Feng Shui, once learned and applied will provide you with relief from stress increase your personal energy levels and help you to improve your overall sense of well-being. Time learning the correct implementation of the principles of Feng Shui is time well spent.

A life in which energy is unfocused, prevented by the stress of the environment, a life in which all efforts seem wasted, is a life unbalanced, a life without Feng Shui. The accumulation of ongoing stress will, eventually, manifest itself in the physical body. Stress releases specific hormones ion the body. An overabundance of cortisol and adrenaline can contribute to heart disease and other chronic illnesses. The immune system, too, becomes affected, increasing the incidences of colds and flus.

To avoid such possible problems, rest is traditionally prescribed. The ability of sleep to improve your energy levels is magnified- truly heightened, when Feng Shui is employed. Feng Shui will show you how to correctly align your bedroom to obtain the maximum amount of good. It will guide you in the placement of your bed and council you on what accessories are required to reduce stress and increase energy.

The principles of Feng Shui are predicated on obtaining the maximum positive energy. It acts to counteract the negative impact of daily and repetitive stress and anxiety. These negative forces sap the life energy from you. feng shui operates to restore your energy, reduce your stress levels and create a positive environment by showing you how to arrange your physical environment to facilitate the flow of Chi energy. Learning how to place objects and arrange your spatial environment to manifest optimum positive energy flow, will help you in all aspects of your life. A Feng Shui designed home will ensure you are provided with the positive energy and harmonious balance you require to not merely live, but thrive in today’s world.

Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice of achieving harmony with the specific placement of certain objects in your home or office, which affects the flow of energy in your surroundings, the Chi (Qi), and this can be positive or negative. Obtaining luck, health and prosperity is usually the main focus of using Feng Shui. My own theory is that Feng Shui creates such harmony in your surroundings, that everything that you look at gives you a feeling of well being. If you look at a broken TV screen or that radio that’s been sitting there for the last 2 years, you will not feel good, right? feng shui cures are used whenever some area of our lives is not going as well as it should, like Romance, Family, Health, Wealth, etc.

Now, what does this have to do with your fish tank? Well, having a fish tank or aquarium can help increase positive Chi in your life. When you are thinking of using a Feng Shui Fish tank, they usually tell you that you should have 8 goldfish (since gold symbolizes wealth and luck) and 1 black fish (to absorb any bad luck), however, I believe that just having a nice, clean fish tank with a good balance of all the elements is enough… and maybe using a lucky number of fish: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11….

Aquariums are auspicious because they present a harmonious combination of wealth attracting Feng Shui factors, and a perfect balance of all 5 Feng Shui elements:

Feng Shui Water element (the water in the aquarium) Feng Shui Wood Element (the plants in the aquarium) Feng Shui Metal element (use some white and gray rocks in the fish tank, or a round aquarium) Feng Shui Earth element (the rocks and gravel at the bottom of the fish tank) Feng Shui Fire element (gold /yellow, orange and red colors of the fish, as well as the aquarium light)

The best area to place your Feng Shui aquarium is in the Southeast (the Feng Shui Wealth and Abundance area) followed by North (Career) or East (Health and Family.)

Don’t place an aquarium in the bedroom or the kitchen. These are the two places where a fish tank can stimulate the Chi too much, making you eat in excess and sleep restlessly. In order to get a good flow of Chi, your tank has to be clean and well taken care off, with happy and healthy fish. A dirty tank and sick fish can emit bad chi and it will do more harm than good. You can use real plants with almost all kinds of fish; just keep them healthy and beautiful. I do not recommend them with Goldfish because they eat them, so you can use plastic plants. It’s the appearance that counts. They have to be clean and pretty.

Remember what I told you about looking at things that make you feel good? Using a Feng Shui Fish tank will always give you a good feeling.

Give it a try. Sometimes just believing that things will change, changes them. But with a feng shui fish tank, I can tell you from my own experience, you will be surprised and shocked by the changes you will feel almost immediately.

If you want to read more about Feng Shui and find very useful information, visit me at http://www.lifewithfengshui.com

One of the things to take note of are poison arrows. Poison arrows are sharp and pointed objects, or anything resembling such objects. Examples of poison arrows include lampposts, the edge of roofs and long slender trees (such as big pine trees). Make sure that there are no poison arrows pointed towards your home. Poison arrows are bad feng shui and can not only cause health problems, but also bring bad luck to the entire household.

For health, the most important part of the home is the kitchen, and the bathroom. To create the good feng shui, it is best to locate the kitchen in your personal auspicious direction. This can be calculated based on your Kua number (which is based on your date of birth – click on the link below to find out your personal auspicious directions). Placing the kitchen in your personal inauspicious directions can cause many health problems. If you live in your house with your other family members, located the kitchen according to Kua numbers of the patriarch or the matriarch of the house.

The choice of decorations for your bedroom is also very important to create good feng shui for your health. As a rule of thumb never use antique furniture in your bedroom. Antique furniture has in it the accumulation of stagnant chi from its previous owners, which can attract illnesses. Having guns and sharp objects as decorations in the bedroom is also bad feng shui; as such objects emit shar-chi (killing energy) that can be very harmful for the room’s occupants.

There are some wonderful Chinese symbols that you can use to attract health and longevity. In feng shui, the crane (specifically the red-crowned crane) is considered to be an auspicious bird as it represents peace and immortality. Placing a pair of crane figurines in the garden is extremely good feng shui for the family’s health.

There is no doubt that raising children requires a lot of the life aspects that Feng Shui advocates and encourages. You need wisdom, prosperity, and definitely serenity to successfully get the little tikes to adulthood. Of course, Feng Shui and children go hand in hand as the little ones need encouragement in all of the life elements as well. It is a tremendous benefit to young minds and hearts to start out life with a healthy dose of harmony. Parents have found success with Feng Shui in aiding their children with sleeping issues, health concerns, and educational obstacles. Arranging their homes and bedrooms to reflect the ancient philosophy is a good start to a peaceful, prosperous road.

The Chinese culture places a huge emphasis on the importance of education. The way your child’s study area is laid out will make an enormous impact on how well they perform in school and types of grades they make. The child’s desk should sit facing the doorway of the room. If a child’s back is to the door, the positive energy will have a harder time reaching the little one. A good way to activate positive chi in a study environment is to place a crystal sphere in the main window of the room. While the crystal in the window is excellent, you don’t want to place the child’s seat in front of the window. This is very distracting and their schoolwork will suffer for it. Keep any sharp objects or even pictures of sharp objects out of the study area. They symbolize negative chi and your child certainly doesn’t need that while trying to learn. Implementing these Feng Shui and children educational practices can make a big difference in the wisdom life element.

Next to a child’s study space, their bedrooms are where kids spend most of their time. It is important for this area to be arranged in the Feng Shui tradition as well. Your first step should be to eliminate any clutter in the room. It’s not funny. Seriously, work with your child to arrange their things in their room without the presence of treasures and trash all over the place. The balance created in their room will improve the overall relationships within the family. Make sure you don’t overlook that handy space under the beds. If there is a lot of stuff crammed in there the positive energy can become stuck and unable to assist the child.

Where the little one’s bed is placed is important as well. The head of the bed should be placed on a solid wall. There shouldn’t be a doorway or window on the same wall. This is to stop chi from flowing out the window or door. Another useful hint is to place the bed so that a person has room to walk on either side of it. It shouldn’t be placed with the side to help with the balance of the child’s life. Once again, it is vital for good energy to have the room to effectively flow throughout the room. As far as other potential bedroom décor goes, you will want to keep mirrors out of the room. If the child needs to see his or herself, they can always look in the bathroom.

There are other aspects of a child’s bedroom that need to be addressed as well. In our Information Age, it is common practice for electronic devices to be all over the house. In a child’s bedroom, these devices need to be used carefully. The electromagnetic frequencies put off by electronics are harmful to sleep patterns and can increase moodiness and aggression. To limit these effects make sure any computer monitor, alarm clock, and lamp is placed three to five feet away from the child. Feng Shui and children are both natural things. These electronic inferences should be avoided whenever possible.

Other décor comes into play in the Feng Shui and children combination. Parents should help their kids choose the wall color in their bedrooms carefully. Bold, loud colors aren’t good for a restful environment. It may be necessary to compromise and use a muted, relaxed version of their favorite color. Younger children will benefit from images that are non violent and non-threatening. Cute animals and favorite cartoon characters are good choices. Older children should be instructed to limit the number of posters they have on their walls that depict negative images of any kind. A child of any age will feel a part of the family when they are alone with the addition of a family photo placed near their beds.

Using feng shui and children’s natural inclination towards relaxation and serenity is a wonderful way to give your kids a solid, balanced start in life. Remember that the use of color, furniture placement, and décor choices are important factors that need to be considered when arranging a child’s living space.